Consent to discharge over non owned land

eve824

greatcrested said:

ProDave said:

Please don't fit a Biodisk.  That works on having moving mechanical parts down in the brown smelly stuff.  Trust me you do not want the job of repairing it WHEN it goes wrong.

Instead choose a treatment plant that works on an air blower to agitate the "stuff" such as Conder, Vortex, Graff, Bio Pure and several others.  Only an air blower pump to go wrong and that lives in the dry and is easy to replace.

We have just installed a new treatment plant. Went through exactly this thought process and chose an Apex (very similar to the WTE  Vortex). Air blower is external and is the only thing that can go wrong so is easy to fix/replace.

In our case the Vortex /Apex were the best options also as they work well when under-used. The plant size is dictated (Building Regs) by number of bedrooms. Total 7 bedrooms so size must be appropriate for 12 people. But with only 3 people in occupation most systems would not work efficiently, except the WTE systems.

Thanks. By chance yesterday I ended up on the WTE site and was looking at the Vortex, it looks like a really good system. We will have a 5 bed for just two people at the moment so it seems especially suitable for us.

We are no further forward on this issue and frustratingly our solicitor is now totally dismissing our concerns and the seller is not being helpful either. This morning we found out the existing septic tank still drains into the ditch which as we understand is now illegal. We are trying to work out whether that's our problem or the buyers of the house at the moment (there's a clause saying they are responsible for maintenance of the existing tank until it is replaced as part of the building works). Feel like there's a huge issue here and everyone including our solicitor is trying to dismiss it/bury it under the carpet without giving us a good reason why. 

greatcrested

The WTE systems will be appropriate, based on the research I did as an amateur (so don't quote me!).

But you do have an issue with the run-off.

You can discharge from the WTE into a drainage ditch - though from a septic tank it's now illegal.

You could also discharge into a drainage field, but this would a) add considerable cost to install and b) depend on your having a large enough area and c) the area being suitable following soil percolation testing.

That just leaves the access issue.

If draining across someone else's land is needed eg to the drainage ditch and there's no consent, you could claim a prescriptive right based on established long use.

But if the landlowner has (or is seeking) PP your drain ay interfere with his plans and that could lead to dspute. Even if you won based on Precriptive Right, the cost stress and hassle of a legal case would be something to avoid if possible....

eve824

Thanks greatcrested. It's not a problem for us to discharge the new STP outflow into the drainage ditch. We just wanted our solicitor to advise us on the onward discharge via the field but she has today told us she is not an expert on septic tanks and so cannot advise. This was after her telling us 'it's fine as its been in place 65 years'. So we are less than impressed and very close to changing solicitor at the moment.

Then, to compound the issue, the seller confirmed to us this morning that the outflow from the current septic tank flows into the drainage ditch, which from my research around the subject I now know as of 01 Jan 2020 that is illegal. Again, our solicitor has washed her hands of this when we asked for advice as she is 'not an expert on septic tanks'. We aren't even sure if we need to worry as it's not legally our septic tank - but it is on our land and we have agreed to replace it when we do the building works.

Fed up and not sure where to turn next.

greatcrested

These rules affect the “operator” of a septic tank or sewage treatment plant and depending on the terms of your lease, if applicable, this could be either owner or tenant. If you drain into a septic tank shared with neighbours then each of you is an operator and you must jointly comply with the general binding rules.

Your solicitor should either educate herself in order to be able to advise you properly, or consult a colleague (at her expense) in order to advise you on the coveyancing she's contracted to complete for you, or hand over to another solicitor/firm, again at her expense, since she has acknowledged she is not competant to do what is required.

She simply needs to learn about the Binding Rules and other recent leglislation (that's what solicitors do - keep abrest of new leglislation!), and combine that knowledge with standard understanding of Rights of Way, Access, etc across neighbouring land, which is not spetic tank specific (but applies equally to access for utilities and other purposes).

eve824

Thanks greatcrested. We are trying to remain civil with her but its hard.

We have just written her a very polite but firm email outlining our two main points of concern in response to her quite frankly unprofessional and knee jerk reaction response to us yesterday.
If we get no useful reply from her in response to our last mail I will be contacting the partner of the practice and asking to be assigned to a different conveyancer.

Either way I will be writing a strongly worded letter about her competence and behaviour towards us after this process is concluded. Shame as we've used her twice beforehand with no issues.

ProDave

eve824 said:

ProDave said:

Is the COVERED DITCH you will be discharging into on the plot or not?

If it is on the plot then you are a riparian landowner, just as you would be if the ditch were not covered and you can discharge into it as the permit allows.

IF however the ditch is NOT on your land but adjacent to it, then you will need permission from the landowner to lay a pipe on his land to pipe your outflow into the ditch.

The covered ditch that the treatment plant will connect into is on our land. But it flows into another that is not.
So in the below plan, we are purchasing the land encircled in red, our drainage ditch is down the left side of the straight red boundary line (on the land) and in the top right corner it flows into the covered ditch (highlighted yellow) that is not on our land.


Thanks for the comments re the Klargester, as you can imagine we are just at the very beginning of choosing a treatment plant so that was given as an example of the sort of thing we are going for, i.e. a decent treatment system as opposed to a septic tank.

You have nothing to worry about.  A covered ditch is the same as an open ditch, you are a riparian land owner.  the land owner downstream cannot just block it off and say no I don't want the contents of your stream any more.  I did not have to seek permission of the 8 or more land owners that the burn passing through our land passes through before it reaches the river.

eve824

ProDave said:

eve824 said:

ProDave said:

Is the COVERED DITCH you will be discharging into on the plot or not?

If it is on the plot then you are a riparian landowner, just as you would be if the ditch were not covered and you can discharge into it as the permit allows.

IF however the ditch is NOT on your land but adjacent to it, then you will need permission from the landowner to lay a pipe on his land to pipe your outflow into the ditch.

The covered ditch that the treatment plant will connect into is on our land. But it flows into another that is not.
So in the below plan, we are purchasing the land encircled in red, our drainage ditch is down the left side of the straight red boundary line (on the land) and in the top right corner it flows into the covered ditch (highlighted yellow) that is not on our land.


Thanks for the comments re the Klargester, as you can imagine we are just at the very beginning of choosing a treatment plant so that was given as an example of the sort of thing we are going for, i.e. a decent treatment system as opposed to a septic tank.

You have nothing to worry about.  A covered ditch is the same as an open ditch, you are a riparian land owner.  the land owner downstream cannot just block it off and say no I don't want the contents of your stream any more.  I did not have to seek permission of the 8 or more land owners that the burn passing through our land passes through before it reaches the river.

Thank you. That makes perfect sense - now why can’t our solicitor just have said that the first time we raised the query to her!  

macksmum

We are in a similar situation but in reverse. We bought a field (partially sited) behind our house  as we wanted to turn it into a wildflower meadow, our retirement project. There is one historical easement on the field from 1967 that allowed our next door neighbour to site a septic tank on the field with associated drain pipes going to and from their house to the tank to carry the foul drainage. However it stated on the easement  that these associated drain pipes could be used "for no other purpose whatsoever".  We have owned the field for seven years  and have replaced a lot of the field drains to help the overall drainage, the current neighbours bought their property in 2018. However the said neighbour recently applied  for planning permission to extend his house by almost 50%, and to our shock and surprise on the submitted plans it stated his surface water drainage would discharge into into a soakaway on our field!  We challenged him about this and said he really had no idea, he had just assumed it did, even though there is no paperwork or Deed of Grant stating this. We had no idea about this discharge from his property and we are certain the person we purchased the field from had no idea either. We have been having conversations with them about this for four months asking for the evidence of their rights to discharge but so far their solicitor has not come up with any response. We do not think they could claim prescriptive easement because the owners of the house have been using this drain secretly without the knowledge of the field owners. It seems it is a down pipe going from their property along a pipe of about say five metres straight from their property across the boundary and directly into our field ground, not into a soakaway. We think that when the property was built 55 years ago  the  builder just buried the pipe for his surface water at the same time as whilst he was digging the pipes for the septic tank without telling the field owner at the time. This is ongoing and has yet to be resolved as we have not hadany response from the owners solicitor.

eve824

Our solicitor finally agreed (after I presented my results of research courtesy of Google and here...) that we needed a Statement of Truth. So she's arranging one now and the vendor has agreed to sign it. Love this new DIY conveyancing service where you do all the hard work and they get the fee   

Anyway, it's nearly sorted now and I hope we will exchange this week.